Fig. 15.—“A Burnt Child fears the Fire.”Fig. 15.—“A Burnt Child fears the Fire.”
(2) While all this is still going on and the child’s arm is still moving forward, the heat of the flame acts as a pain stimulus ats2. The nervous process produced passes overcanddto the muscles atm2, whose contraction results in the arm’s being pulled back. This results in a third stimulation ats3, which we need not trace farther here. But not the whole of the nervous process passes fromcdown tod. A part of it, of considerable absolute magnitude because of the intensity of stimulation, passes fromcuptopand thence overkdown todand finally also intom2. This process going fromptok, according to a general law of nervous activity, tends to attract other, weaker nervous processes, if the neuron connections make this possible. Consequently the nervous process froms1toais now turned mostly into the patha-v-pand only an insignificant part of it continues to go fromatowardsb. The consequence is that the resistance of the patha-v-p-k-dis soon reduced to less than the resistance of the patha-b. The great significance of this fact becomes clear in the third stage of development.
(3) At some later time the flame again acts as a visual stimulus. But now, because of the change of resistance just explained, the nervous process takes for the most part the path overa-v-p-k-d, and the reaction follows atm2instead of atm1. The child has learned to avoid the flame. The child, when seeing the flame, is conscious of the pain, as imagery, without having to receive the actual stimulation ats2.
Thus the inflexible regularity of reaction gives place to another type of reaction, an adaptation, not only to those conditions which at the time make their impression upon the organism, but also to those conditions which are mere future possibilities. The experience of the past guides the organism into the future.
QUESTIONS117. What is the twofold connection into which instinctive movement enters with consciousness?118. Why is the movement of a billiard ball often accompanied by movements of the players or spectators?119. What is a voluntary movement?120. In what manner is will dependent on instinct?121. Why do deaf children not acquire speech? Can they be taught to speak?122. Why is the acquisition of foreign speech sounds by grown people often so slow?123. What is the advantage to the organism of voluntary over instinctive action?124. Can you describe the three stages of nervous development illustrating the proverb “A burnt child fears the fire”?
QUESTIONS
117. What is the twofold connection into which instinctive movement enters with consciousness?
118. Why is the movement of a billiard ball often accompanied by movements of the players or spectators?
119. What is a voluntary movement?
120. In what manner is will dependent on instinct?
121. Why do deaf children not acquire speech? Can they be taught to speak?
122. Why is the acquisition of foreign speech sounds by grown people often so slow?
123. What is the advantage to the organism of voluntary over instinctive action?
124. Can you describe the three stages of nervous development illustrating the proverb “A burnt child fears the fire”?
Atevery moment of waking life a multitude of impressions are received by the mind through the eyes, the ears, the cutaneous and all other senses, giving information about processes in the external world and in the subject’s own body. However, because of the peculiar laws of mental activity, the actual conscious experience differs greatly from a mere sum of all those impressions—from what would be the content of consciousness if mind were nothing but an accumulation of senses. In order to distinguish the actual consciousness from the abstractly conceived sum of sensations, we use as a specific term the wordperception.
Does not a newspaper look different if held in the right way or turned upside down, a landscape if seen in the ordinary way or through our legs? In the latter case there are in our consciousness a multitude of incomprehensible details, lines, figures, colors; in the former we are conscious of one thing, a landscape, with its divisions, each of these divisions with its subdivisions, and so on. The one consciousness is practically the result only of simultaneoussensory stimulations; the other consciousness, in addition to these stimulations, is determined by the laws of organized mind, by attention, memory, practice.
A percept contains both less and more than the sensations corresponding directly to the stimulations. According to the conditions discussed under attention, certain sensations become focal at the expense of others which become marginal. For example, of all things impressing themselves upon my retina, only a few—usually, but not always, those in the center of the field of vision—attain a high degree of consciousness. And of these things again not all the qualities, but only a few become highly conscious. If, as in this case, the visible things happen to become highly conscious, the simultaneously existing audible or tastable things are apt to remain at a low degree of consciousness. That which is important for the needs of our daily life is specially favored and becomes a part of the percept. That which has no practical importance does not easily become a highly conscious part of the present mind. The variations in color of a gown forming many folds are rarely noticed. All parts of the gown are perceived as parts of the same substance. That the whole gown is made of one kind of cloth is practically important. That the various folds appear to the eye—because of the variation of the illumination—somewhat different, is of no practical consequence. Many quite common phenomena, after-images, overtones, difference tones, are never known by the majority of people, because of their practical unimportance.
But a percept contains not only less, but also much more than the sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the moment. Numerous images are woven into this system of sensations and thus give additional meaning to it. Wemay be said toseethat the things are hot or cold, rough or smooth, heavy or light, although our eyes as mere sense organs cannot give us any such information. In the same way we may be said to see that the things are at this or that distance from our head, and that this thing is nearer, that thing farther from us, although our inherited ability to see things spatially does not give us any other information than that of shape and size in the field of vision. By incessantly repeated experiences we have learned, at an early age, that changes in the distance of things which in this or that way have come to our knowledge, are regularly accompanied by definite changes in their size, their coloring, their appearance when the right eye’s image is compared with the left eye’s image, and many similar changes of the impression. Whenever such signs of changes in the distance are impressed upon our mind, we immediately supplement them by ideas of the distances themselves. Thus our original two-dimensional perception of space is expanded into a three-dimensional perception.
All knowledge of things, of their properties, their names, their uses, their meanings, consists in supplementing our consciousness of those qualities which they present to our senses, by images previously obtained through any senses. The force of this supplementing can be understood from the drawings of children and primitive peoples. That which appears in the field of vision is often left unrepresented. Linear perspective, for instance, does not exist in such drawings, although it is a part of the sensory impression. On the other hand, many things are given by the draughtsman which are invisible under the circumstances of the situation, but which he regards as essential parts of the thing because of their practical importance: for instance, both eyes of a person seen in profile, equal lengthof all the legs of tables and chairs, equal size of things at a distance and things near by.
The significance of this supplementing by ideas is illustrated also in pathological cases. It happens that some of the associative connections in the brain are destroyed by disease, reducing the mind to a condition like that of early childhood, when direct sense impressions alone determined action. Patients may see the shape and color of a thing correctly, may even be able to draw it or paint it, but are unable to tell the name of the object, although they are perfectly familiar with it. They cannot answer our question as to what purpose the thing serves; possibly they give ridiculous answers, fitting an altogether different thing. Only when they are permitted to use the kinesthetic and tactual senses by taking the thing in their hands, do they recognize it. In other cases the patient, although possessing his normal sensibility to touch, is unable to recognize things by his hands alone, but recognizes them at once when permitted to open his eyes.
A particularly characteristic feature of our perception is the grouping together into a mental unit of elements which are not united either spatially by contiguity or nearness, or by similarity of their coloring, or their other attributes. The grouping of such elements into a unitary mental state is often the result of a repeated necessity for reacting upon this sum of impressions by a unitary movement. The newspaper held upside down does not invite the reaction of reading. Parts which are separated by blank spaces or by black bars, are separately perceived. But the words and sentences are not perceived, because we have not previously been obliged to read under such conditions. Looking into a furnished room I perceive at once tables, chairs, and other pieces of furniture, although the legs of a chair, forexample, are spatially and by their coloring better connected with the carpet than with the back of the chair. When I am looking at a portrait standing upside down, the dark hair and the dark background become a mental unit, a percept of a dark area. The light face is another mental unit. In upright position the hair separates from the background and unites with the face. I then perceive a person before a dark background, in spite of the similarity of coloring between some parts of the figure and the background, in spite of the difference of coloring between some parts of the figure and other parts. The grouping of the elements in perception is therefore widely different from that which would result from the stimuli directly. It is determined by our habits of reaction upon such groups as frequently appear together in the world in which we live.
Fig. 16.—Two Possibilities of Perception.Fig. 16.—Two Possibilities of Perception.
Let us illustrate this by two figures.Figure 16may be perceived as a rabbit’s or as a duck’s head. When we perceive the figure as a rabbit’s head, the white streaks to the right of the eye are two separate sensation groups, each of them unified with respect to the effect produced by them in our nervous system. They are then the animal’s lips. At the same time the protrusions to the left make us conscious of softness, warmth, flexibility. Now perceive the figure as a duck’s head. Immediately those white streaks cease to be two separate units for our mind. Together with the darker parts surrounding them, they affect our mind as a single unit, the variegated back part of the duck’s head. And at the same time the protrusions to the left make us conscious of hardness, cold,rigidity. The sensory stimulations are exactly the same, but they are differently grouped together, and they bring about further nervous activities which greatly differ in these two perceptions.
Fig. 17.—Varieties of Perception.Fig. 17.—Varieties of Perception.
Figure 17, when shown to a person, is perceived as the result of a child’s careless handling of his ink bottle, as an ink spot. But ask this person if he does not see a boy falling downstairs, and immediately certain elements are grouped together and affect us as being the legs, other elements of sensation are perceived as the arms, and so on. And now suggest to the same person to turn the page slightly to the right and see a man trying to put on his shirt. Quickly the perception changes again; but this time not so much by the breaking up of the former units into their sensory elements and the formation of new units, as by a change of the accompanying ideas. The previous suggestion tends to make us perceive these sensations in one or the other way because it guides our attention. But this guidance is possible only because certain groups of sensational elements (for example, the groups illustrated by our figures) have very often occurred in our mind in consequence of the fact that they originate from external objects which have often been presented to our sense organs among greatly varying surroundings. Thus we have learned to group these elements together and to neglect, more or less, all other elements which may be presented simultaneously.
The total process of selective grouping and of furnishing the groups formed with additional mental contents has often been calledapperception. But this meaning of the term apperception is not universally adopted. Some mean by apperception mainly the selective grouping of the elements, others mean by it exclusively the furnishing with ideational contents. Because of its ambiguity the termapperceptionhas been entirely omitted from the present book, and the termperceptionis used in its broadest sense, including both the processes just mentioned. Perception thus means the working over by the mind of any aggregate of sensational elements given at the time through the sense organs.
While the laws of perception are, on the whole, of the greatest benefit to the organism surrounded by a confusing multitude of physical elements bound together into a large number of more or less stable compounds, of things, there are exceptional cases in which these same laws lead the mind into a reaction not suitable to the situation presented.
That which has often occurred is likely to recur. But it does not regularly recur in the same manner. There are exceptions. It happens that certain things occur in surroundings different from their usual surroundings. These things are then perceived, that is, grouped together and supplemented by images, in harmony with their usual surroundings. But the perception is then in discord with the actual surroundings. To the inhabitant of the plains the colors of things appear rather saturated, and the outlines sharp, when these things are at a small distance from the observer. Walking toward them, he is soon able to layhands on them. But when the air happens to be unusually moist, and because of its diminished weight, free from the particles of dust which have settled because of their weight, things look unusually near, and on walking toward them he discovers that it takes more time to reach them than he expected. The same happens when he goes to the mountains for his vacation, because there the air is always comparatively free from dust. We have here a foreseeing of what ordinarily becomes the subsequent experience, but fails to become it in this instance.
There is another kind of illusion based on the fact that sensations which have been imagined just before the stimuli became effective, are thereby favored and become unusually vivid. This law of attention holds good also when the stimuli are not in exact correspondence with the preceding images. In such a case the perception is more or less assimilated to those images, so that the same stimuli result in somewhat different percepts according to circumstances. “How heavy it is!” said a friend of Davy’s, when the discoverer of potassium placed a little piece of this metal on his finger. Potassium is so light that it floats on water, but the metallic appearance produced the image of pressure and changed the sensation into a percept of something heavy. When two pieces of gray paper, equally bright but of slightly different coloring, are put before me side by side, and I ask myself: is not the yellowish paper lighter than the bluish paper, immediately it seems to be lighter. But I begin to doubt and ask myself: is not the yellowish paper darker than the other; and immediately it looks darker.
Let no one say that this is only “imaginary,” meaning by this word that there are in my mind both the objectively true impression and an incorrect image of somethingsimilar. Such is not the case. There is no duality of consciousness. There is one unitary experience. Only scientific reflection reveals the fact that this unitary experience has two sources, one in the external stimulation, the other in the central nervous excitation. The result of these sources, the percept, does not betray the doubleness of its origin any more than a stream at its mouth shows the doubleness of its sources. It is a universal property of perception to be determined not by sensory stimulation alone, although this is the primary factor, but also by images, by nervous dispositions. The more vivid such images, the greater is their influence—now and then theirdeceptiveinfluence—on our consciousness of the objectively existing. Suggestion is a name which has recently been accepted for such an influence. Illusion is another name for it, in case it is rather pronounced and ill adapted to the object.
QUESTIONS125. What kinds of mental states are called perceptions?126. Illustrate the change of a percept into a mental state not worthy of the name, caused by a change of the situation which involves neither a subtraction nor an addition of stimuli.127. What impressions become a part of the percept, and what impressions do not?128. Show that a percept contains not only less, but also more than the sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the moment.129. What can we learn about perception from the drawings of children?130. Illustrate the perception of a thing whose parts appear spatially separate. (None of the illustrations in the text strictly answers this question.)131. What changes occur when a rabbit’s head is perceived as a duck’s head?132. Are illusions signs of mental abnormality? What are they?133. What two classes of illusions are distinguished in the text?
QUESTIONS
125. What kinds of mental states are called perceptions?
126. Illustrate the change of a percept into a mental state not worthy of the name, caused by a change of the situation which involves neither a subtraction nor an addition of stimuli.
127. What impressions become a part of the percept, and what impressions do not?
128. Show that a percept contains not only less, but also more than the sensations corresponding to the stimuli of the moment.
129. What can we learn about perception from the drawings of children?
130. Illustrate the perception of a thing whose parts appear spatially separate. (None of the illustrations in the text strictly answers this question.)
131. What changes occur when a rabbit’s head is perceived as a duck’s head?
132. Are illusions signs of mental abnormality? What are they?
133. What two classes of illusions are distinguished in the text?
The same laws which govern the supplementing of impressions by images, govern also the supplementing of images by other images. We refer to the appearance of images supplementing other images by the wordremembering, orideation.
What we remember is always deficient in details compared with what we perceive. Remember a landscape, a street scene, a well-known person. Innumerable details are always lacking in the idea, although they were present in the corresponding percept. These details which are lacking may be either parts separable from the object, or mere attributes of sensation inseparable from the sensation. On the other hand, ideas are richer than percepts. They contain elements obtained from other similar perceptions and added by association, as when the idea of a landscape is enriched by a tower, the idea of a person by a beard, which actually are not present at these places.
Ideas are also strongly influenced and altered by other ideas which happen to be in consciousness at the same time (“set of the mind”); for instance by questions, particularly by questions in the negative form—“did you not,” “was this not,”—by the wish to make a good impression upon others, and by similar factors. We may have no intention of exaggerating, in Falstaff’s fashion, the significance of our deeds; nevertheless our memories become gradually modified so that the uncommon, the important, the valuable in them is emphasized, and the common, the insignificant, the unpleasant is obliterated. Wherever our memories are fragmentary and indefinite, they offer but slight resistance to questions attacking this point, for instance:Do you believe that the gentleman was as tall as you are?
Memories are thus, not exceptionally, but universally inaccurate representations of that which has been perceived. This has recently been proved by direct experimental tests. Since percepts, although they rest on a foundation of external stimulation, are so strongly influenced by the mind’s own manner of functioning, the existence of this influence in the case of imagery, lacking such a foundation, is not surprising. Although memories are but rarely totally misleading, mankind has long ago learned to rely upon memory in all important business and legal transactions only when there is agreement between the memories of several witnesses. The changeableness of memory is particularly strong in the child’s mind. The perceptual experiences have not been so often repeated as in the adult mind, and the practical importance of accuracy of remembering has not made itself so much felt. For both reasons the child’s memory is very unreliable.
The wordimaginationis frequently used to signify a specially strong ability to modify memories by associated images. Thus we speak of the imagination of the child—but also of the artist and the scientist. Without imagination the scientist would not succeed in his task of making the phenomena of nature more comprehensible by showing the consequences of the remotest relations between things. It is clear, however, that imagination is not a fundamental “faculty” of the mind, separable from other “faculties,” but a result of the fundamental laws governing mental functions.
Let us turn to the fragmentary nature of reproduced experience and discuss its significance. That previous experience can be reproduced only in fragments is the directresult of the selective power of attention, which asserts itself in both perception and ideation. Not every quality of a thing presented is equally interesting. A child having a watch takes interest mainly in the ticking and in the glitter of the golden case. Meeting a dog, he gives attention to the terrifying bark and the multiplicity of legs. Suppose now that the dog regularly occurred together with a special impression, perhaps a spoken word; then the recurring of this symbol will tend to reproduce in the child’s mind the image of the dog. But the pressure of many competing tendencies does not permit the reproduction of all the qualities of the dog which have become conscious on former meetings with this animal. Only an extract, so to speak, of these qualities is reproduced, and this is made up of those which were formerly especially interesting,—the bark and the legs.
Another factor determining the selection of special qualities of a thing for reproduction is the frequency with which each quality reappears in things which are different in certain respects, but in other respects belong to the same class. The trees of a forest beside which I am walking have many individual differences. But certain features are common to all the trees. These common features reappear again and again, while each of the other features appears only now and then. The same can be said of various dogs met on the street, of various tones of a violin, and so on. If the perception of the trees is experienced together with a certain other percept which may serve as a symbol for the trees, for example the wordtree, the association of the symbol with those regularly repeated qualities becomes firmly established, whereas the association with the other, more or less varying qualities, remains comparatively feeble. The result is that the symboltends to reproduce almost exclusively the former qualities. These come to make up a separate group of images, a general idea.
The laws of attention, practice, and memory, together with the simple uniformity of nature just mentioned, produce thus a peculiar result. They remove ideation from the accidents of external events in an incomparably higher degree than perception. They bring about ideas of the separate qualities of the things perceived,abstractions, and ideas of common features,general ideas. In many cases an idea is both an abstraction and a general idea. Examples of such ideas to which no equally simple concrete object corresponds, are the idea of a mere length, the color red, sight, a dog in general, a tree in general.
These ideas are of eminent importance for all higher mental development. Mind, in them, departs from that which nature presents, but only in order to take possession of it more securely by systematization and by overcoming the narrow limits of the capacity of consciousness.
By separating the common qualities of things from those which vary we classify the things into kinds and species, we think of them as being in various ways related. Instead of having an incomprehensible mass of things standing side by side, we have a system of coördinated and subordinated things, of groups formed according to closer or remoter relationship; and thus it becomes a comparatively easy matter to survey the multitude of things of which nature consists. Not only order, but law too is thus brought into the phenomena of nature. If we collect sticks of wood and set fire to the pile, we notice that some of them burn lustily, others smolder and smoke, still others do not burn at all. Why so? Repetition of similar experiences is necessary before we can give an answer; but mere repetition of thesame event does not enable us to give the answer. The event must be broken up and general ideas must be formed out of the elements of the event. Then only can we answer the question. Some of the sticks burn because they are dry. Others do not burn so well or do not burn at all because they are wet. Neither shape nor color nor origin nor many other qualities of the sticks have any causal connection with the difference of burning and not burning. Both order and law in nature are recognized by abstraction.
Equally important is the overcoming of the narrowness of consciousness by abstraction and generalization. When I am thinking of trees, the contents of my mind are very few. There may be a word image, a visual image of something tall and branching; hardly more. All the special features of trees of all kinds are absent from consciousness. So I can easily think of additional things, for instance of the age which trees may reach, or the elevation at which trees cease to grow. But the moment I begin by accident to think of a thing which does not harmonize with those features of the tree which thus far have been absent from consciousness, immediately those features become conscious and inhibit the contradictory thoughts. They have been unconscious and yet we cannot say that they have been sheer nothing. The consciousness of the general idea has in some way prepared the path for the special features from which it has been abstracted. They have been carried close to the door of consciousness, so to speak, and the slightest impulse coming from an associated idea will cause them to enter. This is our meaning when we say that within the general idea of which we are conscious all those special features are included. They are included by representation, the general idea being the deputy taking care of their interests. Thus our mind isfreed from the necessity of carrying at any moment a heavy load of actual states of consciousness and is nevertheless able to act as reasonably as if those mental states were present. In using representative ideas, our mind has actually at its service the enormous number of all those individual ideas which are represented by them.
QUESTIONS134. Enumerate in what different respects ideation is (more or less) similar to perception.135. Why are reproduced experiences fragmentary?136. How does a general idea originate?137. What is the difference between abstractions and general ideas?138. Can an idea be both an abstraction and a general idea?139. Illustrate the formation of a natural law by means of abstraction and generalization.140. With what feature of political life may the service of a general idea in mental life be compared?
QUESTIONS
134. Enumerate in what different respects ideation is (more or less) similar to perception.
135. Why are reproduced experiences fragmentary?
136. How does a general idea originate?
137. What is the difference between abstractions and general ideas?
138. Can an idea be both an abstraction and a general idea?
139. Illustrate the formation of a natural law by means of abstraction and generalization.
140. With what feature of political life may the service of a general idea in mental life be compared?
There can be no doubt that animals are to some extent able to generalize. A dog or a cat is trained to distinguish between indoors and outdoors and to adjust its behavior accordingly. This would be impossible if the dog possessed no general notion of room or street.
But these generalizations remain rather insignificant so long as they are not connected with one definite image which stands as a symbol for the whole class of things. Nature scarcely presents to us any images which could be used as symbols of this kind. What are we invariablyconscious of when thinking of books, or of trees, or of houses—something that is not only invariable, but also readily separable in our imagination? It is difficult to name anything which fulfills these conditions. But man created what he did not find in nature, symbols which can be used as meaning whole classes of objects and relations of objects. The totality of these symbols is human language.
These symbols are normally divided into four classes of imagery, four languages, so to speak, in such a manner that each class of objects has a symbol in each of the four languages. The first of these languages acquired by the child is the auditory language, made up of the sounds of the words spoken by others. Soon after having begun to understand spoken words, the child begins to speak himself. Thus he acquires a second language, made up of kinesthetic imagery of his vocal organs. These languages are the only ones possessed by illiterates. In school the child learns to read, that is, he acquires a third class of symbols, consisting of visual images of written and printed words. One might of course speak of these as two visual languages, since the sight of written words differs somewhat from the sight of printed words. Finally the child learns to write, and thus acquires a fourth language, made up of kinesthetic images of the writing hand.
These are, of course, not the only languages possible. The blind-born, unable to acquire visual imagery, substitute tactual word imagery by learning to read raised letters or the raised point script generally taught in institutions for the blind. But a seeing person, too, may acquire this tactual language in addition to the other four. The deaf-born acquire a visual language made up of the images of the hand and the fingers representing symbolically letters and words. But it is hardly worth while to enumerate all these minorlanguages. The most important ones practically are these four: the auditory, the visual (written and printed), the kinesthetic of the vocal organs, and the kinesthetic of the writing hand.
We saw that the origin of all these languages, that is, classes of word images, is to be found in speech. How speech itself originated in the human race is a problem which thus far is not solved, or at least, of which no proposed solution has thus far been universally accepted. Some light is shed upon it by the answer to the simpler question as to the origin of speech in childhood. Only during the last few decades has this question been given attention, obviously because this growth of speech, as an everyday occurrence, seemed to ask for no explanation. The child imitates!—what else should be said about it? But in order to imitate, the child must first be able to produce the elements of the things to be imitated. And by imitation speech only is acquired, but not the full significance of language.
(1) Speech originates from instinctive activities of the vocal organs. As a child, when left to himself and feeling well, plays with his hands and kicks, he also, in response to all kinds of external and internal stimulations, moves instinctively (that is, because of his inherited nervous connections) lips and tongue, larynx and chest, and produces a great number of different sounds and sound combinations—not only those which are used in the language of his people, but also the strangest crowing and smacking and clucking sounds. He cannot produce speech sounds without immediately hearing them. Thus an association isformed between sound perception, kinesthetic perception, and motor activity; and soon the sound of his own voice stimulates the child to further production of these speech sounds. This explains why the same sounds are often so many times repeated in an infant’s babble, and why baby talk contains so many reduplications like papa, mama, byby, and so on.
(2) The sounds invented by the child are used by the parents and other people in their communications with the child. They select from the large number those which are like speech sounds of their own language. They address the child with these words again and again, forming also brief sentences, and thus stimulate the child to produce at will the words which he has at his command, in these combinations and sentences. The child thus becomes more and more skillful in the production of these words. Meanwhile the numerous other baby words which have no significance for the people surrounding him, are gradually lost from the child’s mind, so that later they can no longer be produced voluntarily. Practically every child can, on the basis of his articulating instinct, learn any language spoken anywhere on earth. But in later years, when this instinct has weakened and has been replaced by the habit of producing the sounds of a particular language, it is a difficult matter to learn to speak a new language. The sound perception as well as the sound production is then assimilated to the “native” speech, and the words of the foreign language are consequently spoken in a manner similar to the words of the native language. This is meant when we say that foreign languages acquired in adult life are, as a rule, spoken with an “accent.”
The activity of grown people influences the child’s talking in yet another way. The child hears those wordswhich are selected by the people surrounding him, usually in the presence of the persons and things and events for which the words serve as symbols. Thus new associations are formed. To the kinesthetic and auditory word images is added imagery of the word’s meaning. The child comes to experience the words as symbols and to reproduce ideas of the words when the things appear as percepts or images. Only then can we say that the child has really learned to speak, to express his perceptions, his images, and his feeling and willing in speech.
(3) When the child has reached this stage when he begins to comprehend the practical importance of this activity of his vocal organs, he begins to imitate voluntarily, eagerly, the speech of grown people. This imitation is to some extent mechanical, without involving any comprehension of the meaning of the words. The child simply enjoys being able to produce the same words which grown people use. This imitation is in many cases at first very imperfect, because many elementary sounds necessary for these words have not been produced instinctively thus far and therefore cannot be produced voluntarily, the kinesthetic imagery being lacking. But soon even the more difficult sounds are produced accurately. The vocal organs acquire the habit of assuming certain normal positions, from which the special activity of speech in each case of pronunciation proceeds. In a few years the total number of words necessary for a command of the language is acquired. But voluntary imitation is not restricted to mere pronunciation. It is applied also to the modes of uniting words into compounds, phrases, sentences. The result of this application is the creation of new compounds out of the words which the child has at his command at the time,of new methods of applying inflection, to the amusement of those who surround him. The following are a few examples of such creations:goedforwent,chairforsitting,more pencilforI want the other pencil,mussing downas the antonym ofmussing up.
Voluntary imitation, therefore, does not altogether mean assimilation to the language which the child hears spoken; to some extent it means departure from that language, resulting from the mental capacities with which he has been endowed by nature. In another way too the child’s language must differ from that of grown people. All acquisition of speech is based on perception and is subject to the laws of perception. We have previously seen that perception is largely dependent on the interest of the person who perceives, on his previous experiences.
A child’s interests are totally different from those of a grown person, so that many words cannot assume in the child’s mind the meaning which they possess in the adult’s mind. At a later stage this difficulty can to some extent be overcome by the aid of language itself, by explaining in words the meaning of a new word. At the beginning this is of course impossible. So a large number of words used by adults remain for a long time entirely meaningless to the child, especially abstract words, relative words (to-day,here,I), and words meaning things with which the child does not come in contact. Even those which he seems to understand perfectly have a different meaning. A watch is to the child something which ticks and sparkles. The adult’s meaning of the word can in no manner be conveyed to the child. The name of a particular article of food may be used for all things which are edible, also for eating, for hunger, and so on. A certain baby called his father, mother, nurse, sister, all by the same name,dada, thenapplied this word also to his bottle, and finally to every interesting object.
This does not mean that children generalize more than adults, that they have a superior logical capacity. The meaning of the child’s words is often more general than that of adults because the child takes interest in fewer qualities, and naturally finds these in a greater number of objects. But the difference is not that of a greater power of generalization. Very often the child’s words have a more special meaning. A child is not likely to use the wordanimalas meaning worms, birds, and horses. The difference lies in the fact that the child uses the word as a symbol for a thing or quality which is conspicuous tohim, interesting tohim. A child’s language is amusing to grown people only because they do not know the meaning which the words have in the child’s mind, and are inclined to substitute the meaning which they have in their own minds.
(4) In spite of all imitation, the individual’s language is largely his own creation adapted to his individual needs. To the extent to which the children of a community, of a nation, have similar interests and similar experiences, these individual creations must be similar. But to the extent to which interests and experiences differ, language must differ. Baby talk which is quite comprehensible to the members of one family is incomprehensible to those of another family. Similarly, the language of one tribe of the human race has come to differ from that of another tribe, one nation’s language from that of another nation. Family differences, of course, cannot last long. The child’s language assimilates itself to the language of the people at large as soon as the child comes under the influence of people outside of the family. This is the fourth stage in the developmentof an individual’s language, lasting much longer than the three preceding stages, indeed practically never ending. From mistakes in comprehending others, from mistakes of others caused by his own language, or from special instruction in school, the individual learns how the words which he uses are to be understood in order to agree with the general usage of language, and thus approaches more and more the ideal of uniformity of speech.
This uniformity, however, can never become complete. The number of words of which various individuals have command always differs. Their meanings always differ slightly, sometimes considerably. Accordingly the phrases and sentences which one uses differ from those of others. Every one has his own linguistic style. For most practical purposes the actual uniformity of language is sufficient. Not a few misunderstandings, discussions, quarrels, however, have their source in the insufficiency of this uniformity. This is regrettable, but unavoidable. The nature of mind creates language such as it is, and mind has to make the best of it. It is only on a very high level of mental development that men succeed in creating for definite purposes definite languages which admit of almost no differences of meaning; for instance, the symbolic systems of mathematics and chemistry. But these systems prove that the very perfection carries with it an imperfection. The specific power, the art and beauty of language, are not to be sought in mathematical and chemical treatises. They depend on the speaker’s and hearer’s individuality.
Just as one individual’s language differs from that of another individual, the language of one time differs from the same nation’s language at another time. The words ofa language change or are replaced by new ones. The inflections change, are probably simplified, or as in the case of the English language, almost completely lost. The manner of forming compounds, phrases, and sentences is altered. The meaning of the words is no more fixed; many words change their original meaning entirely, even to the opposite. Changes of the former kind—changes of the sounds, their inflections, and their combinations—are brought about partly by external and fortuitous conditions, such as the Danish invasion of England or the Norman conquest, also by greater ease of pronunciation. But here the laws governing mental life are also determining factors, and in the changes of meaning every growth depends on these laws. The same forces which build up the child’s language in conformity with his experiences, thoughts, interests, and needs, bring about also the gradual changes of a nation’s language in conformity with the changing experiences, thoughts, and needs.
Under special circumstances one among all the properties or features of a person or thing may occupy the mind almost exclusively, as of Julius Cæsar the despotic power which he obtained, of Captain Boycott the ban which was placed upon him. In such cases, when the name is heard and pronounced, the special feature impresses itself upon the mind. The speaker thinks of little else than this. And when the necessity arises of expressing in a word that peculiarity in another place under different surroundings, the individual name offers itself, since its original meaning has already been modified, since it has already lost most of its individual significance. The part of its meaning which is retained is now generally applied. An expansion of the special meaning has taken place.
On the other hand, words which were originally appliedto many things in many different situations come to signify a particular thing under particular circumstances. This change of meaning is illustrated by the names which the state or nation gives its officers. President, secretary, general, captain, had originally a very broad meaning, but when applied to the officers of the state have a very special meaning. It is easy to explain this. The wordcaptain, meaning originally merely the chief of any aggregation of people, is naturally applied by the speaker most frequently to the chief of that company of men in which he is particularly interested. The chief of another company of men is then no longer called by this simple name, but additional names are used. The word when used without additional words comes to mean exclusively the chief of the special group which is of main interest to the speaker. Similarly,cityassumes for the person living in the country the meaning of the city near by.Gasmeans for the man who is not a physicist only the ordinary illuminating gas.
Other changes of meaning resulting from associative connection and a transference of attention are the metaphors and metonymies. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which one object is spoken of as if it were another; for example, when St. Luke says, “Go ye, and tell that fox,” meaning Herod. A metonymy is the exchange of names between things related.Toiletmeant originally a small cloth, a napkin, spread over a table. Then it came to mean the table itself, used in the process of dressing. Then it meant the process of dressing one’s hair, later the general process of dressing one’s self. It also assumed the meaning of a person’s actual dress, his costume; also the style of dress. More recently it has come to mean the toilet room, the lavatory.
Many changes in the meaning of words result fromcertain secondary purposes of the speaker. We usually address another person in order to obtain something from him. In order to succeed, we must keep or make him good humored, give him his proper honors and titles, flatter him rather than call attention to his faults. The consequence of this exaggeration of the person’s value is that all titles, all forms of appellation, especially those addressed to the female sex, tend to deteriorate, to lose their original value.Ladyno longer means the wife of a nobleman, but is applied to a washerwoman.Siris used in a letter addressed to any man, however low his rank.
Deterioration of the meaning of words is not restricted to those used for appellation. Whenever we desire to convey any thought to others, we must make it appear important enough to have people give attention to it. We therefore choose terms which mean more than we intend to say, rather than terms which mean exactly as much or less. We call things lovely or horrid when we mean only agreeable or disagreeable, we speak of heaven or hell when we mean only a good or a bad place. The inevitable result is, of course, that the impressive words become insipid. We call a student fair who is only mediocre, merely because of our good will towards him.Fairthen comes to mean mediocre, and we call a student fair who is a poor student. Finally, a fair student comes to mean a poor student.
Those who are particularly anxious to use impressive language—young people, students, soldiers—often use the other extreme for the same purpose. They use words which signify low or bad things and relations (slang) in order to refer to the things and relations of ordinary life to which they want to call attention. “Grub” comes to mean human food. “Being plucked” takes the place of “being rejected at an honor examination.”Puritanandquakerare slang terms of the seventeenth century which have entirely lost their original meaning of contempt and ridicule. In the same way words of low meaning are all the time being raised into the realm of good language.
Speech depends as much on the totality of mental life as perception. A person’s choice of words, their forms and their connections, are determined by previous habits of using words, by experience concerning those qualities of things which are most important to his own interests, by his consciousness of his present needs and ends. The general purpose of communication between the members of society tends to obliterate differences between individuals and between generations. But it never does this perfectly. Individuality, circumstances, and special purpose give to the language of each person an individual stamp; and the succession of individuals, of historical conditions, of the varying needs of successive generations, brings about unavoidably alterations in the language. These alterations are retarded by the existence of a written language, of literature. They may also be retarded artificially by training and compelling the members of a community to use the same words and the same rules of grammar and syntax. Such artificial remedies, however, are not without serious disadvantages. They take the life out of language. Force, beauty, and particularly truthfulness in representation of thoughts are likely to be sacrificed unless we are willing to admit a certain amount of lawlessness, which, after all, is the outcome of the fundamental laws of the mind.
Aside from its social significance as the almost exclusive means of communication among the members of society, language has its significance for purely individual mentalactivity and mental growth. This has already been referred to above. Language makes possible an almost unlimited refinement of abstract thought, a complete analysis of the data of perceptual, ideational, and affective life into their elements, and the construction out of them of new concepts, first according to their similarities, then according to purposes. Such concepts as acceleration, pitch of tone, irrational number, atomic heat, justice, bliss, would be impossible without language. To the invention of such abstract concepts mankind owes its subjugation of nature. It is difficult to think of the exact manner in which bodies fall when they are dropped; some fall slowly, others with great velocity, some do not fall at all, but rise. But think of them as being in space from which the air has been exhausted, and apply the concept of acceleration. At once the matter is very simple, and it includes even the heavenly bodies with which we never come in direct contact: all bodies fall withconstant acceleration.
This is but one of innumerable instances. Practically all laws of physics, chemistry, philology, psychology, and all the other sciences are stated in terms of highly abstract concepts. Imagine, for example, the sine or tangent of an angle, electromotor force, molecular weight, consonants and vowels, intensity of sensation. None of these abstract concepts and none of the laws in which they appear could have been invented without the aid of language. How restricted, further, would be our knowledge without language! How limited the exchange of opinions! Think of such a phrase as “the events of the last thirty years.” What a multitude of ideas is suggested by it in the most economical manner! Few of these ideas actually become conscious; but all of them are made ready to serve if their services should be needed.
Language further enables us to overcome, whenever this is necessary, the ambiguity of its own elements (the words) which results from the individual and historical conditions influencing the growth of speech. The meaning of words can be fixed by definition. Such words ascircle,energy,freedom, have many different meanings (a circle of friends, the energy of style, the freedom of a city). The physicist defines energy as the capacity for performing mechanical work, excluding any and all other meanings. The philosopher defines freedom as the possession of the power to act in accordance with one’s inherent nature, independent of external causes. Because of the association between the defined and the defining words, the latter keep the defined word from being used wrongly, by entering consciousness when the defined word happens to be used in an improper connection. It is true that, in order to insure constancy of meaning, the defining words, too, should be defined again by others, and so on. A perfect definition is therefore an ideal which can be approached, but never reached. In spite of this, the value to human thought and knowledge of clearly defined concepts is immeasurable.